The experience of being in between-between the time we leave home and arrive at our destination; between the time we leave adolescence and arrive at adulthood; between the time we leave doubt and arrive at faith. It is like the time when a trapeze artist lets go the bars and hangs in midair, ready to catch another support: it is a time of danger, of expectation, of uncertainty, of excitement, or extraordinary aliveness.
Interpretation
Life is experienced in transitions between different phases, filled with uncertainty and potential.
In this quote, Paul Tournier emphasizes the liminal spaces in life where individuals transition from one significant stage to another, highlighting the mix of emotions that accompany these changes. He uses the metaphor of a trapeze artist hanging in midair to describe the tension, anticipation, and vitality found in these moments of suspension where personal growth and transformation occur.
In practice
This quote can be used during a graduation speech to highlight the uncertainty of entering adulthood.
It is quite clear that between love and understanding there is a very close link...He who loves understands, and he who understands loves. One who feels understood feels loved, and one who feels loved feels sure of being understood.
That is what marriage really means; helping one another to reach the full status of being persons, responsible and autonomous beings who do not run away from life.
What happens then is like what happens when we separate a jigsaw puzzle into its fuve hundred pieces: The over-all picture disappears. This is the state of modern medicine: It has lost the sense of the unity of man. Such is the price it has paid for its scientific progress. It has sacrificed art to science.
In order to really understand, we need to listen, not reply. We need to listen long and attentively. In order to help anybody to open his heart we have to give him time, asking only a few questions, as carefully as possible in order to help him better explain his experience.
Acceptance of one's life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices.
The most tragic consequence of our criticism of a man is to block his way to humiliation and grace, precisely to drive him into the mechanisms of self justification and into his faults instead of freeing him from them. For him, our voice drowns the voice of God.
I've never heard my dad say a bad word about anybody. He always keeps his emotions in check and is a true gentleman. I was taught that losing it was indulgent, a selfish act.
You should run your life not by the calendar but how you feel, and what you're interests are and ambitions.
Leisure consists in all those virtuous activities by which a man grows morally, intellectually, and spiritually. It is that which makes a life worth living.
I gave myself the small task of writing honestly about the kind of life I knew. I believe there is some value in carrying out that task, however limited.
I remember laughing with relief that the same old adolescent boredom goes on from generation to generation. ...the words took me back to my own years of stagnancy, and that terrible waiting for life to begin. [p. 68]
Living your best life is your most important journey in life.
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